By Putt Del Pino, Levinson and Larsen; World Resources Institute; 2006
Synopsis: Accepting that anthropogenic climate change is real and is a problem that can be addressed, controlling greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is the very first and possibly most important step in assuaging the potentially catastrophic consequences. This document lays out the process of doing that, from background on ACC to planning and developing your GHG inventory to tools for managing emissions.
Reflection:
Preface: I’ve been experiencing a great deal of cognitive dissonance re: ACC lately. That experience doesn’t really pertain to this document at the tree level, but it does on a forest level, so I’m bringing it up. Also, it’s been grinding on me and I feel like venting.
As stated in my intro, anthropogenic climate change (ACC) is a foregone conclusion for me. It is not, however, a foregone conclusion for everybody, including some of my family members. I normally don’t have the patience to discuss this issue, but for family, I’ve made an exception, and I find myself paying attention to and investigating some things I normally wouldn’t. This leaves me deeply troubled.
I’m not troubled because it’s possible we’re wrong about ACC. Could there be better news than to hear our current way of life doesn’t have the disastrous consequences some of us think it does? What troubles me is how this attacks my empirical worldview, deeply rooted in the scientific method. In my worldview, we don’t know anything until it’s experimentally verified and replicated. Well, it turns out there is scientific data out there that directly refutes many of the claims made by pro-ACC scientists. Without going to the trouble of reading all the source documents myself, it seems we (superficially?) have equally valid and totally contradictory data; data generated by the rock of my worldview, the scientific method. So we have two or more claims, all based on the scientific method, and not all of them can be right. Any way you cut it, it calls into question the scientific method. So, if the scientific method is fallible, how do I know anything? (Note: In my experience, questions of epistemology are best discussed over a pint of stout. Any takers?)
Coincidentally enough, this morning I listened to a reassuring Science Friday podcast. It seems it is possible the above cognitive dissonance is caused not by a flawed scientific method, but by a flawed system of reporting and/or dissemination of information (admittedly, dissemination of info is part of the scientific method, but not at the level talked about in this podcast). This was reassuring but in little way does it help me find cognitive consonance; as much as I wish otherwise, I don’t have the resources to study the scientific journals myself. So where am I left? I am not religious, but there is wisdom in Pascal’s Wager. We have everything to gain and little to lose if we take action to mitigate ACC. On the other hand, if we choose to not accept ACC, do nothing, and it turns out we were wrong…
On to GHG emission inventory and management. Rather than sharply criticize or glowingly praise this particular resource (it’s not a resource that lends itself to either), I’m going to attempt to inventory my personal GHG emissions in the same way a business or organization might. My reason for doing this is manifold. First, in my daydreams about corporate salvation, I’m often using tools like this. The depth of knowledge gained from reading and taking notes pales in comparison to the depth of knowledge gained by using and doing. Second, as well as I think I live my life, I am not so arrogant as to believe I couldn’t do better. Seems like inventorying my GHG emissions would be a nice step in that direction. Note: I won’t be taking this to the same level as a business would, simply because accuracy takes time I don’t have. This means many steps will be easier and some will be harder. Last, you reading about me managing my GHG emissions is more interesting than reading my notes. You’re welcome.
Step one is easy: assign resources. For a business, that would mean selecting personnel and allotting a budget; for me, it means me. Two, we begin the inventory by establishing its boundaries i.e. what are we going to include in the inventory? For a business, that would mean selecting business units, their activities, and the portion of those activities/emissions for which the business is going to consider itself responsible. For me, it’s me, doing what I do. Next, we categorize our emission-causing activities to decide which will be included in the inventory. This means looking at direct emissions, indirect emissions, and the concept of “scope,” and it’s at this point the process becomes similar for the business and me, so I’ll stop pointing out the differences unless they’re particularly important. The most important of these important differences concerns ownership of the facilities responsible for emissions, and I won’t get into this because it’s boring and I’m not sure I fully understand it.
Personally, Scope 1, direct emissions are simple because I live in a rented apartment in a building that uses centralized, hot water heat. Thus, my only Scope 1 emission is from vehicular travel. Scope 2 would include indirect emissions from the heat and electricity I purchase and consume. There are also Scope 3, indirect emissions that are complicated by leases. I can’t quite decide if the electricity and heat I’m consuming are Scope 2 or Scope 3, but it doesn’t matter as this guide requires me to include both. Last are Scope 3, indirect emissions from sources not owned or controlled by me, third-party production or manufacture of materials and resources used by me, outsourced activities, etc. This guide doesn’t require these emissions be accounted for, but since they’re a large portion of my personal emissions, I will, and you could really go deep here if you wanted. As the guide states, “Scope 3 is a very broad category of emission-causing activities that can cover just about every business or product to which your company is connected, however tangentially.” For my food and daily consumables, do I include the fuel used to transport it from field to market? I eat beef. Do I include bovine flatus? I purchase and ride bikes. Do I include emissions from their production? How about the CO2 I exhale while riding? There is an interesting distinction made in the guide. For some of these categories, whether or not you report them depends on how easily the source of emissions can be quantified and how large its proportion of overall emissions. This isn’t as simplistic as it sounds. It’s a logical assumption that the more difficult a source of emissions is to quantify, and the less obvious it is as a source, the less responsible I am for it.
OK, so in my personal inventory, I’m going to include emissions from personal vehicular transportation and the electricity and heat I purchase and use. On a theoretical level, I think it’s valuable to consider emissions from transport of goods used and waste produced, more so for a business that is consuming many times what I do personally, but these emissions are also going to be relatively less and much more difficult to quantify. I’ll continue to eat local and organic whenever possible, but I’m not going to figure out how much emissions are saved by doing so.
For vehicular travel, quantifying is as simple as looking at receipts for gas purchases for a given length of time. I don’t have my receipts, but I drive two, sometimes three days a week and I estimate I fill my tank twice a month. Ol’ Cleo (that’s my ’97 VW Golf) has, I think, a 13 gallon tank. To be conservative, I’ll estimate I use 30 gallons of gasoline a month, and since I rarely have passengers, all of that is on me. I also estimate I travel by plane once per year, and it would be a simple matter to calculate an average distance per year traveled by plane. To be accurate, I would have to know the make, model, and efficiency of the planes on which I’d traveled, but it could be done.
Heat is more difficult, as my building uses central hot water heat, but a call to the super or management company could probably get me the volume of fuel used and the building’s occupancy, so it’s simple arithmetic to figure out my portion of emissions from heat. Electricity is easy, as I live alone and get a monthly statement that records kilowatt/hours (kWh) used.
OK, we know what we’re paying attention to and how we’re going to measure it. Now we need something to which we can compare, our base year. Some of this selection will depend on availability of data. Since I’ve move around a lot and don’t keep receipts and statements, if I was serious about this, I would probably have to collect data for a year and use that as my base year. Businesses would be better about hanging on to documents, and things have gotten easier with access to online statements and such.
Now we have our data, but it’s not in units that are usable for calculating emissions. I know how much gas I use, but I don’t know how many pounds of CO2 I produced. For that conversion, we use an emission factor and we end up with the following equation: activity data * emission factor = GHG emission. Emission factors are complicated beyond the scope of this little exercise, so I’m not going to go further with them. Suffice it to say they “are published by various entities such as local, state, or national government entities and intergovernmental organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and are frequently updated, so it is important to use the most up-to-date and relevant” (page 38). Armed with activity data and the appropriate emission factors, you can calculate your GHG emissions. Note: there are several calculation tools based on the power of the Excel spreadsheet, and in many cases, will be faster and more convenient to use, but their use should not be mindless. Also, looking at the equations themselves can be a powerful tool in altering behavior. We can directly control only one of those variables: activity data. We can travel fewer miles. We can indirectly control the emission factor by selecting a mode of transportation that has a smaller factor. Those are the only ways to reduce emissions.
The last step is the actual management of emissions, and we start with goal setting, and those goals will depend on the base year. Since I selected what I feel is an “average” year for myself, and since my intent is to decrease my emissions, my goal will be emissions less than my base year. How much less depends on several factors. For a business, it could be dictated by legislation, feasibility, or other reasons I can’t think of right now because I’m completely hopped up on caffeine and low blood sugar. For me personally, I would follow an experimental approach. Let’s say I arbitrarily select 10% reduction. I then find out a 10% reduction is feasible or not, and I can alter future goals to be more realistic. This approach is probably not realistic for a business.
Actual reductions on a personal level are the realm of Oprah and Real Simple magazine: install compact fluorescent lightbulbs, turn down the thermostat, take alternative transportation to work one day a week, etc. There are business analogs to these, and the guide does a good job of covering them. Often this is where we hear talk of “low-hanging fruit.” Reduce emissions through the easiest paths possible to start.
For a business, the final step will likely be reporting all of the above, especially if its goals were set because of regulatory legislation, but also because stakeholders should be interested in efforts like this. My reporting consists of making my friends feel bad by broadcasting at the slightest provocation that I ride my bike to work. I’m a hit at parties.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment